[Simple nephrectomy with retroperitoneal laparoscopy].

OBJECTIVE

Nephrectomy was one of the very first urological procedures to be performed by laparoscopy. The objective of this study was to evaluate the results of retroperitoneal laparoscopic simple nephrectomy.

METHODS

From 1995 to 2002, 88 retroperitoneal laparoscopic simple nephrectomies were performed in 87 patients with a mean age of 45.3 years (range: 18 to 77 years). The intraoperative and postoperative complications, conversion rate, blood loss, operating time and length of hospital stay were studied for each patient.

RESULTS

The mean operating time was 114 min (range: 35 to 280 min), mean blood loss was 97.6 ml (range: 0 to 300 ml), there were 3 conversions (3.4%) and the mean length of hospital stay was 4.7 days (range: 2 to 13 days). The main postoperative complications were 2 cases of haematoma and one abscess of the nephrectomy site requiring surgical revision and 3 intraoperative thromboses of arteriovenous fistulas in 3 patients with polycystic kidney disease.

CONCLUSION

Due to its low morbidity, laparoscopic simple nephrectomy has probably become the, reference technique for all indications for nephrectomy for benign disease.